hey there, would any of you guys with recording experience be able to clue me up on the best way to make this -

http://soundcloud.com/sonbelly

- sound a little less muddy??

i imagine i'd be a) don't play as loud, b) buy better mics etc, but thought i'd ask anyways...look forward to hearing any feedback!

Without adding more gear and $

  Tune the drums! Remarkable how much of a difference this will make on the tonal quality of snare, toms, kick. If the heads are heavily worn, it is your best interest to replace them for recording purposes. Tune drums the day before recording, to save your ears! Minor adjustments right before recording.

Guitar and drums need to be separated to achieve better control over your frequency response from your microphones.  Still, they can be in the same room, if you can create a barrier...blankets...homemade isolation guitar cabinet. Mic placement goes a long way! 57 is a good mic for the kinda recording you are engaged in.  Sounds like you are having fun.  And that really is the point.

Try close miking your amps and doing the drums later. wait, What instruments do you start out with? Killer Krunch and I in the dRIVIN bEATS start with Bass and Guitar. Check us out on our Reverb Nation site.

http://www.reverbnation.com/thedrivinbeats?profile_view_source=header_icon_nav

Many many years ago when I had someone record my two man band's record -- the way we did it was drums in the kitchen all by themselves and a guitar amp in the living room and then a bass amp on the other side of the house. With my Les Paul going through both amps we got a really fat sound.

I gotta say -- I like the way the recording sound came out, but if you wanna clean it up a little bit then I guess it seems like the place to start is with isolating the instruments even just a little bit.

yea. the gtrs and vocals are way better. especially the gtrs.

cool tunes too

well  first of all i should say hi to all cause this is my first post....

now on topic ,dubie is right full on.

when you record live there are 3 really important things: instruments and settings (meaning cymbals ,drum tuning , gtr amp/settings...) , mic positioning (avoiding phase cancellations is really important too if you want some decent bass freq.and especially if youre gonna mix in mono) and room acoustics.in general the point of a live recording is to capture a band playing in a room so i guess we all like it kinda muddy but not too much.you need some definition too...

so ,i have to add 3 things to dubies spot on reply.first check out some stereo mic positioning techniques and experiment.there are alot of stuff you can do with 4 (or even 3 mics).second get your drummer to mind his dynamics.third import your rec tracks in some sequencer and experiment with the eqs a little.this way you can propably get some definition out of most recordings. but be carefull its easy to get excited and overdo it...:)

cheers

Honestly, if their  is a way you can get your recordings onto tape you'll be surprised by how good it sounds. Its my opinion, but the natural compression of tape does wonders.

There's some pretty cool advice in here!

I started this discussion; The Offical Recording Thread, ages ago and I've added this discussion to the list I've put in it. Check it out, its got a ton of info on recording in it.

First i wanna say that i really dig your tracks and hate the fact that you're in the uk. Would love to plays shows with you.   

As far as recording goes, what worked for my 2 man band is recording live, and having the guitar amp in another room. Bass drum mic, snare mic and one room mic. And we did the vocals separate. A method we used was to turn up the sensitivity in our mics(think 57's?) and clipped everything else.

http://losalamos.bandcamp.com/

OK. Live rehearsal; sounds like you'll probably need to treat that room.. especially in the immediate vicinity of your drum set.  This will undoubtedly tame those high frequencies, and maybe save you the expense of a new set of cymbals ;)...

You might also ease up on distortion levels on both guitar and (especially!) vocals... this can always be applied afterwards – in a more "controlled" manner.

Also: try isolating drums-guitar-vocals as best you can when recording live... build some "goboes", use carpets across backs of chairs, hang up blankets – whatever you can think of that might help separate the three... 

:) If you could give me some more info on your session set-up I could probably be more specific.

e.

stiv rippengal said:

the cymbals i have are sabian xs20, which i was led to believe were reasonably good, they have been bashed about a bit so you never know, may finally be time to cough up and get some new ones!

as you said, as a live rehearsal recording the sound was alright, but for anything more than a demo we were thinking of trying to be a little more 'pro' (not the right word at all but i guess you know what i mean...)

dublÉ said:

Not necessarily just a placement issue!.. crap cymbals can be a pain to sort out in a mix, so a better set might be a good investment.

e

stiv rippengal said:

haha yeah i suppose so...it's mainly the cymbals that are all just turning into a mush but i guess that's all down to mic positioning?? won't be going 'hi fi' any time soon though lol

Not necessarily just a placement issue!.. crap cymbals can be a pain to sort out in a mix, so a better set might be a good investment.

e

stiv rippengal said:

haha yeah i suppose so...it's mainly the cymbals that are all just turning into a mush but i guess that's all down to mic positioning?? won't be going 'hi fi' any time soon though lol

Off the bat I would have to say that this sounds very much like a recorded rehearsal, and as such it doesn't sound half bad! :)...  Anyway: In general, muddiness will indicate that you want less of something (certain frequencies, compression, and so on...) but it would be helpful to have some session details... i.e. how many tracks, recording equipment, microphone placement on drums, any effects, etc. etc.... 

Without this information it's hard to say if there is a fix or if you have to do another take.

e

Why do you want it to sound less muddy?

Isn't that the whole point of a two piece band?